Discover Your Career Path With Innovation + Entrepreneurship Programs

ACCELERATE, Wentworth Innovation and Entrepreneurship Center nurtures a culture of innovation and entrepreneurial thinking among Wentworth’s students. Connects students with mentors, alumni and professionals to learn, explore, push their ideas, follow their passion, have fun, and grow. We offer programs, but also events, workshops, and fun activities for EVERYBODY.

The Startup Challenge helps Wentworth students turn their ideas into reality.

The focus is on the learning experience! Innovative thinking and entrepreneurial spirit are livelong skills regardless if you are starting your own company or not – you’ll become more desirable to companies.

More than 5,000 participants have engaged since 2012. 600+ interdisciplinary teams formed ideas and students were connected with 300+ Alumni and professionals from Boston’s ecosystem. We conducted nearly 160 events, which are open to everybody and 200+ mentors engaged. So far, 58 teams were funded for a total of $227,050.

Our belief is that inspiration happens everywhere, but particularly where you don’t expect it. Creating workshops and events that allow students to leave the beaten or predictable path for their disciplines is encouraged and intentional. That’s why we make sure to bring in amazing individuals with a story that is non-linear and full of possibilities. This is what contemporary careers are – explorations following a passion!

The Social Innovation Lab is a 12-week interdisciplinary and immersive experience encouraging coop students, the Social Innovation Fellows, to create innovations that matter, solve real world issues and work in a high-intensity environment. Students partner with an external organization, e.g. WGBH, Zoo New England, Boston Children’s Museum, State of Massachusetts and others, to address a challenge they are facing. Throughout the process the Fellows are connecting with over thirty external thought partners and organizations to harvest subject matter expertise and transfer it to the SIL challenges.

From preventing homelessness, effective recycling systems, stroller re-designs and support mechanisms for individuals with disabilities to patients undergoing strenuous infusion treatments, zoo visitor engagement, and animal enrichment. The problems tackled can be quite diverse, however the process is always the same and follows design thinking principles:

The City of Boston and Wentworth’s Accelerate co-founded the CollegeThinkTank Boston. A one-day event intended to bring together students across diverse disciplines and universities/colleges to ideate around a real-world challenge the city identifies. On June 15, 2013 100 students from 19 colleges came together at MassChallenge and tackled “vacant storefronts” alongside innovation firms such as IDEO, Continuum, Design Museum Boston, and IXL Center.